Category Archives: NFT

Marketplace Solutions for the NFT Creator

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The old-school brick-&-mortar approach of forcing a creator to ‘fit the mold’ with regards to content creation and distribution is quickly becoming a thing of the past. As technology advances, more creators are going to find that there are alternative paths for content distribution that don’t involve large, centralized organizations.

Ultimately, I’d love to see more creators leverage the power of blockchain to incentivize perfectly good strangers to sell their project for them. This is why I put together the Selene Network (DSN). The network protocols allow creators to own and manage their content while also incentivizing others in a trustless manner.

The latest addition to my Selene Network collection of demos is the ‘NFT with Marketplace demo Version 1’ (see the display section on this page). This NFT has a built-in secondary marketplace.

Imagine being a creator and offering a NFT collection that represents 100 pieces of something unique. Say, every day the creator posts something new to the collection. If this demo code is used (and slightly modified), not only would the creator be able to incentivize sales, but they would have a built-in marketplace where the unique items could trade.

No need for a third party centralized website. Instead, the functionality can be served right off the creator’s own website where there is a high level of trust in the content (and means to the content).

Take a look

MarketPlace Demo V1

So, install MetaMask and instruct it to connect to the Theta Network. Once you have, connect it to this website (AmorStyle.com) and visit the links in the display block above.

If you would like to see other examples built on the Selene Network core code, visit the Gallery.

Contacts

Feel free to tag me on Twitter @AmorStyleYoga. Every sample that I create is available for download and review. See the project JSON file for details.

The DRM Anything NewFunctionaliTee

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DRM Anything NFT

A while ago, I was asked to create the framework that would allow someone to hide a document on a server and then only allow access to someone that proved they owned a particular NFT. Likewise, provide functionality that downloads a file to the user machine after it passes the signature and if it holds an NFT of the given project.

Well, I have a demo and it is called the DRM Anything NFT.

I’ve updated this code again, so now not only does it present a link and download a file, but it also allows the ‘unlocking’ of a unlisted video on YouTube.

And yes, we both know that the content that is being delivered can be copied and shared. Most content online can be. What this demonstrates is that the server will only share this content with website visitors that demonstrate that they own an NFT in the project and that they are the owners of the wallet that holds the NFT.

More Info

Not only does this NFT support the basic Selene distributed sales Network (dsn) functionality (which offers sales commissions to sales agents and allows for common minting) but it uses the new infrastructure that I added which can be used to validate signatures.

The new functionality is the Instant Access button. If the visitor does not own the project NFT, the Instant Access button will be disabled. Once minted, the button is enabled. When it’s clicked, MetaMask is launched so as to sign a message that can be decoded on the server. The message is the timestamp and smart contract address.

When MetaMask returns the signature, the client browser sends that information to the server so it can be decoded and validated. When the info is found to be valid, the server validates that the signing address actually holds a non-zero balance in the project.

After all this checks out, the server returns the hidden information and it’s displayed to the visitor next to the Instant Access button.

What are the dependencies?

The good news is that the code that performs this work is all in the dsn core files. This means that the entire system (dsn) can be easily installed on just about any server.

The bad news is that there is no built-in database functionality with this NFT. This means that the file that provides the secret will need to be edited to change the prize.

What’s next?

Well, I’d kinda like to see this code evolve so that it could be modified using WordPress on the backend. Ultimately, the artist should be able to make simple modifications to their database and the signing process unlocks a database searchable list of secrets.

The classic example would be to sell an NFT that works as a membership ticket. The NFT has a lifespan and the owner uses it to unlock private content.

Let me know what you think.

A Theta Hackathon project – Selene Network

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Hack it 2024

Today, I officially entered the blockchain based distributed sales network(dsn) in the Theta Hackathon as the Selene Network project. I’m going to call is SelNet for short.

Here is a link: https://devpost.com/software/amorstyle-distributed-sales-network-selnet

If you missed my previous blog post, this dsn is flexible opt-in sales system that empowers creators to incentivize sales through influencers bypassing standard centralized marketing approaches.

In this system, creators determine the sales commission and influencers determine if it is worth talking about. Settlement happens at the time of minting and as long as the sales goals are met, there is no restriction on capturing the rewards.  

In really simple terms, if you are an influencer and you like talking about cool NFT projects, this is a way to get paid if people mint based on your endorsement as long as the NFT project build to this protocol.

Support my work!

In order to show off how it works, I created a time limited mintable NFT that can be minted throughout the Hackathon (last mintable block number: 26243000 ). This NFT pays 50% of the mint Tfuel to any Agent that makes the sale. It also pays 5% to any website that offers access to the network.

To qualify for this commission, you have to get registered as an Agent or a website. If you want to build a sales force, you mint an Agent NFT. If you just want to endorse projects and capture the commission, you need to find someone that is willing to register your MetaMask compatible Theta Network address into the Agent system.

If you want to learn more about the Selene Network, follow the link.

I want to support you!

The other part about this project is that it needs people to build and deploy projects that are SelNet compatible. For most people, this can be technically challenging or, even worse, daunting. I’m here to help simplify this. The infrastructure that I’ve created takes a lot of the complexity out of the process.

If you already know that creating a simple NFT is something that you need, pitch me your idea and I can help you realize the benefits of this decentralized sales network infrastructure.

If you are an influencer, getting setup as an Agent is another option. Nothing better than getting paid to talk about things that you already love.

Minimum requirements

It should be obvious, but the smart contracts and NFTs are all built on the Theta blockchain and require that anyone interacting with the network use MetaMask. It’s pretty easy to setup, search for the official MetaMask website and download the browser extension that works for you.

Once you install, you’ll need to make your MetaMask wallet Theta blockchain aware. After doing that, you’ll need to acquire some Tfuel, most likely through a decentralized exchange.

Unfortunately, when it comes to using the technology, the customer has to show this basic level of technical understanding. This is one of the reasons why the network checks for the Participant NFT in the connecting wallet. The thinking is, if the customer can’t get this far, they will not be able to use the NFT as designed by the creator.

The good news is that MetaMask currently have over a million customers and they are working to solve that onboarding issue. As they solve that issue, more customers will be available to use the network.

What’s Next?

If participating in a network like this appeals to you, feel free to contact me. Best way is via my twitter handle: @AmorStyleYoga.

If you’re an influencer and you love the Theta blockchain or NFT projects on the Theta blockchain, let the creators know that this network is available so they can drive sales through the people that teach people about the projects. It’s an Opt-In system!

Selene distributed sales Network

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The next thing that I would like to introduce is a collection smart contracts that work together to handle settlement for a distributed sales network on the Theta blockchain. I’ve been calling it The Selene distributed sales Network.

The idea is to incentivize more people to want to get involved in NFT projects. The incentive comes from NFT project creators providing a commission during the NFT mint. The NFT project creator offers that commission based on what they determine is reasonable for their project. The smart contract publishes that commission so that agents of the network can determine if talking about that project is worth the effort.

When a customer mints an NFT in the creator’s project, the smart contract carves up the mint funds as stated by the creator. Effectively, the NFT manages the commissions for the different agents and allows restricted access.

As more creators learn that cool functionality can be enabled, or leveraged, using smart contracts, more of them will want to offer their services in an online fashion like this.

How does it all work?

First and foremost, this is a network of people that are all agreeing to work together in a semi-trustless way and the quality of what is offered is directly related to the amount of effort that different players offer to the network.

This network assumes there are Content Creators, Influencers, Technicians and Customers.

The Content Creators are the NFT projects. They offer up commissions to the agents and technicians to support their projects. They publish the minting commissions in order to incentivize the influencers to talk about their projects.

The Influencers are the Agents of the network. When you are a registered agent, any time someone mints using your Agent Id, you get a cut of the commission. Distribution of funds is handled by the smart contract.

The Technical people are those that provide websites and smart contract services for Content Creators. In order to talk to Smart Contracts, it needs to be handled by a website. And, because this is a network, would be better if multiple websites offer access to the content.

Digging deeper

All the code for this project is currently published on this website. And, if you visit the gallery page, you’ll see a number of demos that use this technology.

Note that The Gallery is where I’m demonstrating this project. Please visit that link.

More Info

Even though this project is published and available for anyone to read or implement. I will be fielding questions in the TraderPunk discord. If you want to know the gritty details or get help as a Content Creator, please look me up.

Selene Network Participant NFT V1
Selene Network Agent NFT V1
Selene Network Website NFT V1

Membership Demo newFunctionaliTee

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Have you heard about Kalamazoo? If not, have I got a story for you!

For this demo project, I wrote a little JavaScript to go along with the two new NFTs that are now on the Theta blockchain.

And, even though the mint is unlimited, there will only be 42 winners awarded! It’s a first come, first served winning spree, so once you understand the concept, make sure you read how to win! (below at claim prize).

Kalamazoo

The main NFT is the Kalamazoo membership demo. This NFT simulates buying a club membership that costs a penny an hour. When a member signs up, there is a joining fee of $0.25 and the requirement that the purchaser funds at least 100 hours’ worth of membership time.

To do this, I wrote some ‘treasury’ code in the smart contract that allows the NFT owner to manage his Tfuel balance. Anyone can add Tfuel to an NFT, but only the owner of that NFT can withdraw the balance. At any time, anyone can query in order to determine how much tfuel balance is left. If there is a balance, the membership is considered active. If funds backing the token run dry, the owner of the NFT (or anyone else) can reactivate the NFT by placing funds on that account.

The fee associated with minting, reactivation and membership is credited to “The Titled” person (or account). The contract has the idea that there is a project owner and an IT owner. The project owner is considered the property owner, thus is credited the funds associated with the project. The IT owner is allowed to operate admin functionality in the smart contract on behalf of the property owner but can’t claim any funds.

Said differently, funds are managed by token Id. If you put 50 Tfuel on your token that will be used to pay your membership balance over time. But, if you transfer your token to someone else, they will now have ownership of that Tfuel balance which effectively gives them the hours that you just bought. In a way, the Token now has intrinsic value based on the number of hours of membership time it can buy.

Penny Oracle V1

I also created a contract that can be used to provide the current cost of a penny’s worth of Tfuel. The Kalamazoo contract uses the Penny Oracle V1 in order to determine the dollar price for membership.

This means that the value in the treasury buys more or less time as the price of Tfuel fluctuates. If tfuel goes to a dollar, the Kalamazoo membership will only charge a penny’s worth of tfuel per hour.

(* There is also a concept of claiming which cements the running calculations. If you want to learn the details, find me in the TraderPunks discord.)

Summary

If I were to spin this contract up again, there are some things that I would do differently. The most obvious thing is to write fewer functions in the smart contract.

Why? Well, Solidity and JavaScript allow for returning multiple values on a call. When loading a page for a website, each call adds to the load time. Thus, rather then call a bunch of small routines to get the ‘status’ of the NFT, it makes more sense to call a getStatus() type routine that returns everything at once.

So, how to you take a closer look?

Kalamazoo Membership

The best way to get involved is to visit the minting page:

Mint Page Here

Oh, and read the whitepaper.

Also, this is a demo, so cut it some slack. The best thing you can do is copy the project and put out something better. If not, help me make it better. 

Claim Prize

To win the prize, you have to follow a specific set of steps in order to be allowed to claim a winning position. These steps are designed to show you how to mint, withdraw your balance, reactivate and monitor your remaining hours.

Basically, when there are 15 hours left on your membership balance, the Claim Prize button will activate on the minting page. If there is still a position open, you will be assigned that position and the token will enter the winner’s circle.

The easiest way to get there is to mint, withdraw your balance and then reactivate with enough Tfuel to cover the $0.10 reactivation fee and another $0.15 to enable 15 hours’ worth of membership time. If you get that correct, the minting page will enable the Claim Prize button and you can ‘win’ if you want.

I Intend to Play newFunctionaliTee

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Mint Intend and then Mint ToPlay

This is the third in a series of NFT demos that I have put together on the Theta Blockchain. This one builds upon the functionality of the previous two (Metadata hash and SendLock) to demonstrate two contracts working together to provide the solution.

The solution is to provide an on-chain technique by which a project creator can test the water to see if there is enough interest to launch a bigger project. For instance, if the project only really makes sense if there are at least 500 people that support it, this IntendToPlay NFT combination technique can gauge interest via the Intend NFT and then allow for the transfer to the ToPlay NFT once the minimum threshold is reached.

Note that this is to gauge the support of people, not coin and that a single contract could be used, but then, but then I wouldn’t have a multi-contract demo to provide.

So, minting the Intend NFT shows that you’re interested in the project. Once enough people have shown interest, minting of the ToPlay NFT will be automatically enabled for those that hold the Intend NFT.

And now, more details.

Intend NFT

The Intend NFT has limitations which become features. It is soulbound, meaning that it cannot be transferred to another account but, it can be burnt. It is intended to be burnt and replaced by the ToPlay NFT. The ToPlay NFT will only mint to addresses that hold an Intend NFT. And, during that mint, the ToPlay contract burns the Intend NFT held by the account minting.

There is no limit to the number of these NFTs that can be minted, just one per wallet.

Contract address: 0x4fc38d4ec30fe79c37990309ad6d2f488c4c12a1

Link to DappIntend file for minting.

ToPlay

The ToPlay contract is a fully functional 721 with SendLock functionality. It will only mint to addresses that hold a Intend NFT. And, during the mint, the Intend NFT is burnt and replaced by the ToPlay NFT. The minting process will not be enabled in the ToPlay contract until there have been 7 Intend NFTs minted.

There is a limit of 84 ToPlay NFTs.

Contract Address: 0x1d8898b814cf8f33e78c2a5eecd363e3e52df361

Link to DappToPlay file for minting.

Process

The cost of minting an Intend NFT is 5 Tfuel, cost of the ToPlay NFT is 4 Tfuel and the cost of SendLock protection is 1 Tfuel.

Step 1. Follow the link to the Intend NFT and mint.

Step 2. Tell a friend so at least 7 are minted

Step 3. Follow the link to the ToPlay NFT and mint.

Summary

I’d like to thank you for following along with these projects. The code used for the Metadata hash project has been used on all three demo projects. All code and data used to build each project is downloadable and verifiable. If you get the first demo, I’ll provide you the code that performs the verification.

I’d like to shout out to ThetaScan.io for providing the ‘dapp builder’ code which is used as the page that provide minting ability here.

SendLock newFunctionaliTee

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Mint Link Below

Mint

As NFTs evolve to provide more services, the loss of that resource (or what that NFT grants access too) could cause significant emotional or even financial hardship.

This next Theta blockchain based NFT introduces a modification to the standard transfer design in 721 contracts that can be employed by NFT creators that will help protect the NFT resource in the case of the account being hacked.

When websites offer functionality that requires a ‘hot’ wallet (one that is always connected, or wallets where the user remains logged in for extended periods of time (like Metamask)) it opens up situations where family members or co-workers could find ways to access your resources.

Or, regardless of the wallet state, if someone else gets a copy of your private keys, they have complete access to your resources. If multiple people hold the same private keys, both people have full access to the resources of that wallet. If one is a hacker, chances are high you will lose everything you store in that wallet.

To help mitigate the damage done by less secure crypto wallets (and environments), the SendLock newFunctionaliTee contract allows the resource owner to register (or cash) the next transfer operation for the NFT before any damage can be done by a hacker.

The idea is like this:

  • Mint the NFT
  • Put the NFT in the wallet where you’ll use it
  • Perform a sendLockRegister() call giving it your backup wallet

Now, the next time a send operation is executed on this NFT, the contract will move it to the cashed location – NOT the requested location. And, once it’s been set, it can’t be unset. Thus, the hacker will not be able to override this functionality.

I encourage you to give it a try with this sample NFT. It cost 5 tfuel to mint, 3 tfuel to ‘flip’ the coin and 1 tfuel to register the SendLock wallet.

Here are some links to the SendLock NFT.

Contract Address: 0x738acc1ecf2339079c54a8bf8fc47aa3535bb65f

Minting Page

Whitepaper